CARTWRIGHT, THOMAS NOTLEY (ca. 1798-1896). Thomas Notley Cartwright, soldier in the War of 1812 and one of Stephen F. Austin'sqv Old Three Hundred,qv was born about 1798 in Georgia, the second son of Thomas Notley and Martha Cartwright and a cousin of John Cartwrightqv of San Augustine County, Texas. His father moved the family to Wilson County, Tennessee, by 1812, where his three brothers had settled. Young Cartwright served at the battle of New Orleans with the Tennessee militia and received bounty land. He settled in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, where he married Ann Davis in 1823.
The same year he moved to Ayish Bayou in Texas after buying the improvements of Daniel McLean. He moved the following year to Austin's grant, where he received a league on the Colorado River and a labor just below San Felipe on August 10, 1824. He voted in the alcaldeqv election at San Felipe on December 22, 1824. Early in 1825 he sold his land and returned to Ayish Bayou, where he farmed and worked at his cousin's cotton gin over the next decade. He applied for and received a headright in the area that became Polk County from special commissioner Charles S. Taylorqv in 1835. At this time he had five children and one slave. Cartwright served in the Texas army from July to September 1836 and located his bounty land in San Augustine County, where he lived until about 1845. He then moved his family to Houston County. There he died in October 1846. His widow and sons still lived there as late as 1860.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Eugene C. Barker, ed., The Austin Papers (3 vols., Washington: GPO, 1924-28). Mary Smith Fay, War of 1812 Veterans in Texas (New Orleans: Polyanthos, 1979). Thomas L. Miller, Bounty and Donation Land Grants of Texas, 1835-1888 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967). Marion Day Mullins, First Census of Texas, 1829-1836, and Other Early Records of the Republic of Texas (Washington: National Genealogical Society, 1959). Virginia H. Taylor, Index to Spanish and Mexican Land Grants (Austin: General Land Office, 1976).
Margaret S. Henson
